


Digital Vale

by callmeKestrel



Series: We Own the Night [2]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Freeform, Random & Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29689605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeKestrel/pseuds/callmeKestrel
Summary: The dirt above him settles against his face, thick clods of soil and clay press into his mouth and nose. The endless pressure of the earth is almost comforting, and Johnny wonders idly how long it’s been, how much time has passed since his forceful departure from life.
Relationships: Alt Cunningham/Johnny Silverhand
Series: We Own the Night [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153994
Kudos: 7





	Digital Vale

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty random ideas I had about time while JS is stuck in Mikoshi

The dirt above him settles against his face, thick clods of soil and clay press into his mouth and nose. The endless pressure of the earth is almost comforting, and Johnny wonders idly how long it’s been, how much time has passed since his forceful departure from life.

He sinks deeper into himself, closer to sleep, or death, or whatever the beckoning void may be, and he contemplates Alt. About eyes the color of spring grass, and hair the color of summer wheat that looked perfect tangled up in the silver of his fingers.

_Fuck._

It had been ten years, ten long fucking years of chasing a ghost, of seeing her in parts of everyone around him and _hating_ them for it (through no fault of their own). At least he had finally freed her, and maybe now… No. He didn’t think he would be able to sleep ever again, even though he could no longer feel her eyes on him everywhere he went.

The loam around him shifts, breaking over him like waves from the sea, tugging him in different directions, and he frowns. Hands grasp at him, and if he were still alive, his heart would be pounding out of his chest. But he’s not. He’s locked away in whatever hell heaven decided to throw him in (it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it). Whatever eidolon is pulling at him now is incessant, ghosts clutching against his soul, heaving him up from his bed of soil.

He rises to stand, the taste of metal in his mouth makes him grimace, and he pulls his dog tags from between his lips. The metal chain zips against his teeth, and he slips it around his neck. The covering over his eyes falls away as he rises to his full height and clinks against his boots. He squints, fingers brushing through the dirt, and he picks up the coins that had been over his eyes, and frowns down at them; twin silver dollars rest in his palm. He slides them into his back pocket.

Johnny’s hair sweeps across his face from a source-less wind. The barren landscape before him is painted in shades of red, shimmering in the distance. Mountains rise along the horizon, ever shifting and moving, sickeningly reminiscent of his time spent in Mexico.

One hand comes up to scratch at the hair on his face, the other digs through his tac-vest for a cigarette. He lights it without prelude, but the subsequent drag does nothing to steady his hands. His thoughts are racing, and he can’t keep his jaw from clenching. Is he –

“Hey, Johnny.”

He doesn’t turn around at the familiar voice, opting to gaze at a blood red moon just starting to peak above the mountains. It flashes across the sky like a stop motion film, and he rubs his eyes before finally turning.

Alt is leaning against an ancient Camaro, in the same outfit she wore the last night he saw her alive: torn jeans, brown leather combat boots, scuffed leather jacket over a white t-shirt; _his_ white t-shirt. A Samurai medallion dangles from her neck.

He turns away from her to ponder the sky again. Stars are zigzagging across the deep red backdrop, and he raises one hand, drawing imaginary lines between them.

“Am I dead?” He asks, turning to face Alt again.

She gazes at him thoughtfully before replying, “Perhaps. Yes and no. Johnny Silverhand lives on, in a sense, thoughts and memories intact and uninterrupted. As for your soul? Well, who can really say what a soul is?” Alt crosses her arms over her chest, one cybernetic finger tapping against her arm, impatient as ever.

She pushes off from the Camaro, boots kicking up tiny clouds of dust as she walks around to the driver’s side, “Hop in. We’ll talk on the way.”

Johnny sighs, flicks away the filter of his cigarette and watches it tip end over end before vanishing. He slides into the passenger seat, except its not quite movement as he expects. He wanted to be in the car, so he _is_. The Camaro roars to life, the familiar growl of the engine brings him a modicum of peace, and he relaxes into the leather seat.

Alt clears her throat delicately, pulling his attention back to her. She is holding out one hand expectantly, one restless thumb tapping against the steering wheel.

“What do you – _oh._ ” Johnny digs around in his back pocket and drops one of the coins in her hand.

The landscape moves and shifts around them, almost as if _it_ is moving instead of them, and the sensation makes him feel slightly ill. He rolls the window down and sticks his arm out, catches the wind with cupped fingers.

“So… where’re we going?” Johnny asks, glancing over at Alt. She returns his gaze, blonde hair blowing around her face. She gifts him with a soft smile, and something in Johnny’s chest twists at the sight.

“You’ll know when to stop.”

The hours pass, or maybe it’s only been minutes; hell, it could have been centuries for all he knew. At one point, he fiddles with the radio until soft music is playing in the background. He hums with every song he knows, and sometimes Alt hums along with him.

Johnny looks to his left, out the driver’s side window. The mountains have dissipated into a cliff, glittering red sea sparkling beneath them in the source-less light. If he thinks hard enough, he can almost imagine the tangy salt of the ocean air thickening the passage of wind around them.

“Let’s stop for a sec.”

Their passage halts instantly, there is no force pressing him out of his seat. In a second he is out of the car, pacing back and forth on the sea cliff.

_Did anything fucking matter anymore?_

He pulls the second silver coin from his pocket, thumb brushing over its tarnished face, before pulling his arm back and launching it into the sea. Johnny watches it tumble through the air for a moment before turning back to the car.

He settles back in his seat and pulls another cigarette from his pocket, tac-vest having vanished to leave him in his Samurai tank. The familiar motion of taking a drag calms his nerves, even though there is no hit of nicotine to his system.

The landscape around them is endlessly changing, mountain ranges growing from nothing only to shift and level once more. The passage of time is impossible to measure here but Johnny can’t really bring himself to care. He is staring at Alt, but she doesn’t comment on it. He wants to scrub out the previous final memory of her lifeless body he had locked away.

Alt’s thumb is tapping against the steering wheel in time with the radio, and before he can think, words are pouring out of his mouth, “Alt, I’m so – “

Her hand leaves the steering wheel, one finger pressing against his lips so suddenly that he almost swallows his tongue.

“It’s not your fault, Johnny. Arasaka had painted a target on my back long before you and I were involved. Don’t blame yourself.”

Her hand leaves his mouth to tangle through the curls at the back of his neck, and he leans into her touch, entirely dedicated to the feel of her fingers twisting in his hair. It takes him a moment to realize that the constant shifting of the land around them has stopped, the drone of the Camaro’s engine fades into silence once more. They are in front of a shrine, Japanese architecture arching towards a sunless sky. Mountains rise around it, looming yet protective all at once, and he shivers in the shadow they cast.

He is out of the car before he can think, peering through the doorway. He turns, and Alt is leaning against the Camaro again, as she was when she first appeared to him.

“This your stop, Samurai?”

Johnny exhales a breath, neck craning to see past the peaks surrounding him, “Yeah,” he clears his throat, “this is my stop.”

Alt gives him a sad smile, lips poised and ready to speak, but before she can Johnny is in front of her, hips pushing her against the car, and he slants his mouth over hers.

Its not the same as when they were both still alive, and he thinks back to the last time he kissed her; she had tasted like whiskey and sex and sunlight, and he focuses hard until her essence dances across his tongue. His eyes slide closed, one hand reaching up to cup her cheek, the other coming up to grasp her shoulder. His thumb presses lightly into the hollow of her throat, and she is almost warm and firm enough beneath him that the whisper of her lips against his _doesn’t_ feel like just a memory, doomed to fade from existence. He pulls away, gasping because instinct demands it.

Alt’s hands are resting against his chest, and Johnny can almost feel her slim fingers slipping through flesh and dancing between his ribs to squeeze his heart.

_I love you,_ is what he wants to say, but some small part of him knows that this isn’t _his_ Alt, and whispering sweet nothings is never his style.

He turns away from her, stands on the threshold of the temple before him, wondering what ancient deity lived here in ages past.

Johnny looks over his shoulder one last time, but Alt and the Camaro are gone, as if they never existed; the ache in his chest increases tenfold, and he wonders if she took his soul away with her, to wherever she resides now.

Johnny has no way to track time here, he just knows that it feels _sempiternal,_ like he has one finger on forever. He bides his time thinking about Alt, about how she died, how he died, strapped to a chair as Saburo Arasaka himself pulled the metaphorical trigger. He can almost remember the exact moment of his demise, how it felt to have his soul flayed from his body.

He wanders through the empty shrine that he calls home now, forever climbing up an infinite loop, lost to time and his own thoughts.

He pauses, leaning against a balcony, peering down into an eternal drop, and wonders if he jumped, where he would land - if he would land.

There is a vague, inconsistent pressure against his back, and he shrugs it off to continue climbing, his constant movement providing some sort of relief, even though it doesn’t expend any energy.

That tension is back, catching his shoulder above his cybernetic arm and he stops, turning slowly; has Alt finally come to retrieve him? Is Alt even still _here,_ wherever that may be?

To his surprise, someone unknown to him stands before him, and he frowns, “And you… Who are you?”


End file.
